Palm Sunday Sermon

There were almost certainly two processions into Jerusalem that week. Passover filled the city and Rome reinforced the garrison every year, so Pilate would have come in from the west with cavalry, standards and armour, as an annual demonstration of who was in charge.

And from the east, down the Mount of Olives, a man on a borrowed donkey with a crowd of provincials waving branches.

Once you see the two, the donkey stops being humble and starts being pointed. It is a parody of an imperial entry, staged deliberately, on the same day, in the same city.

[read Mark 11:1-11, and Zechariah 9:9 if you have time for both]

Note how much staging there is. The colt is arranged in advance, with a password. This is not spontaneous enthusiasm. It is something he organised.

Hosanna does not mean hooray. It means save us, now. The crowd is not worshipping, it is petitioning, and what it wants is the other kind of king, the one who removes the garrison.

Which is why the same city that shouts this on Sunday can shout something else by Friday. Not because crowds are fickle, but because he did not do the thing they were asking for.

Mark ends the entry strangely. He goes into the temple, looks around at everything, and because it is late, leaves. No cleansing, no confrontation, not yet. He just looks, and goes.

[your material, 500 words - what it means to be welcomed by people who want something else from you]

Resist finishing on Sunday's ending. The congregation will get there in a week. What they rarely get is a preacher willing to leave them standing in the middle of Holy Week with the branches still on the floor.